Missing instructions and missing recipes from the website: Some of the web-based recipes don’t have everything I need to make the bread, and some recipes are missing altogether

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29 thoughts on “Missing instructions and missing recipes from the website: Some of the web-based recipes don’t have everything I need to make the bread, and some recipes are missing altogether”

I’ve had a alot of problems slashing (master recipe, p.26: AB). I’ve tried both the flour dusting and water on both the knife and the surface of the loaf. I have come to the conclusion that it is the knife. I’m using a bread knife, but it must not be very sharp (although new). Do you recommend a brand of bread knife? There are too many from which to choose.

I have orders from our extended family for many loaves…we love this bread and the ease of making it. If only I could get past the slashing problem.

John: Can’t say I favor one knife over the other– I’m pretty sure that’s not the issue. Make sure you are stabilizing the loaf with your other hand– I use my thumb and forefinger (don’t cut yourself!). If you don’t stabilize, the loaf tends to move and you don’t get your cuts to take.

In HBin5 pg 182 Stuffed Sandwich Loaf recipe, there are no doughs listed as stated in the recipe.

What doughs would work best with this recipe? Also, for the spinach, feta and turkey variation, does the spinach need to be sauteed prior to filling the bread? Or does it just go in plain? Should it be chopped? Should the turkey be chopped as well?

Andrea: on p. 182, it says “any lean or enriched dough to your liking.” So anything in the book will work, it’s just a matter of taste.

You don’t need to saute the spinach first. It will disintegrate to some extent so there’s not much need to chop, but if you want to be sure no one gets a big piece of spinach, go ahead and chop 1st. Same for the turkey. Since you slice the bread, that’s where these flat ingredients get fragmented. If you chop too much, the pieces may fall out of the bread as you slice it; keeping them whole prevents that. Jeff

Adding my question here as I see this post has recent answers. 🙂 I searched for “sour”, couldn’t find my answer so looked in “faqs”.

I mixed up my first batch and made rolls later that same day. When I made rolls on the second day, my husband asked was it a different recipe. The bread I made last night has a sour taste. As in sourdough, not spoiled. I like it but guess the rest of the family doesn’t. Is the sourdough flavour normal? and if not, any idea why that happened? Thanks

Lori: Absolutely normal, sourdough flavor develops over the 14-day storage, but that depends on which recipe you’re using. Which of our books/page number are you baking from? To avoid the flavor development, store in a cold part of the fridge and use up before 5 days.

About free recipes on people’s blogs– I’m sympathetic with folks trying to protect their recipes. This is not an easy way to make a living, so I’d cut them some slack! Jeff

And FWIW, I’ve been disappointed when a food blogger I follow, presumably helping them become popular, decides to publish a book and takes the recipes off the site. (not saying you guys did that, I can’t remember) Completely fair to not publish new recipes but disappointing when the old ones disappear.

In Healthy Bread, p. 109: Narrative mentions cracked wheat, white whole wheat, and traditional whole wheat. Recipe includes all-purpose flour, but no regular whole wheat. The dough was extra wet and hard to manage, and the bread was fairly flat, though delicious. Did I miss something, or did you?

The opening paragraph mentions regular whole wheat, but that is a mistake, the recipe doesn’t call for it. Was the dough chilled before you used it? If so, how long. This dough needs some time for the cracked wheat to absorb the water.

Yes, the dough was chilled overnight – probably about 12 hours. Just checked the remaining dough, and it looks like perhaps the absorption process just took longer, so I’ll try a loaf tomorrow.

Yes, I’ve tried several other recipes successfully, and find them very satisfactory — as in, delicious. And when reading the comments yesterday, I learned how to make a lighter crumb. I use King Arthur flours, along with Bob’s Red Mill, and will experiment with the extra moisture in higher protein flour.

Still wet, Zoe, but very tasty. I ended up putting today’s loaf in a loaf pan, so it wouldn’t spread into flatbread. That helped. I’m going to try a new batch soon, and triple check what I do. I’ll let you know what happens.

Today I baked the first loaf from the new batch of cracked-wheat dough, and it’s perfect! Just crusty enough, beautiful crumb, and delicious.

I think the problem with the first batch was pilot error, or a senior moment, or something of that nature. This time, I made sure I had the measurements exactly right, and surprise, surprise! It worked!

Betsy’s Seeded Oat Bread is in our second book, Healthy Bread in Five Minutes a Day (on Amazon at http://bit.ly/3wYSSN). If you have our first book (http://bit.ly/cNtfJI), you’re right, it’s not in there.

I just made the Whole Grain Garlic Knots with Parsley and Olive Oil (pg 64/65)… fantastic! The kids and grandkids ate them up and loved the interesting look. I wound up putting the parmigiano on at the end but it mostly fell off. I didn’t find that the instructions indicated when to put it on, or in, the dough. Next time, I’ll plan to include in the warm parsley/garlic mixture. What did you have in mind? Thanks so much!

Hi there, I recently bought your book, The New Artisan Bread in 5 Minutes a Day and have been enjoying making my own bread and pizzas. I just wanted to ask about adding cracked grains and seeds to the bread?

I added about a cupful to my latest dough mix. I have just baked a loaf and it’s very dense and craggy looking. Any advice? I did wonder if I should add it to the original dough, or mix it through in some way just before baking? Or maybe I should have added extra water to the dough?

Craggy-looking doesn’t surprise or concern me, and you won’t know how it affected density until you bake off a loaf. So try one. My guess: yes, the seeds absorb some water, and next batch, maybe compensate. Don’t know how much. Or even work in a little water now– but then add a little flour too, to set up a new fermentation so that you don’t lose your rise.

I made the dough for the Soft Whole Wheat Sandwich Bread in Health Bread in 5 on p. 92., although I halved the recipe. When I went to pull the bread out to bake it was so loose, gloopy and sticky that I couldn’t manage to get it out of the storage container. I reviewed the recipe and I think I halved all of the other ingredients but might have added the full amount of water (oops). Can I salvage the dough by adding more flour? If so, how much? Can I make other things besides loaf bread with the dough.

You sure can! Just calculate the amount of flour you left out of a full recipe– basically, all the other ingredient amounts divided by two. Then let it rise about two hours and you should be fine.

You can make pretty much anything in the book with that dough. Except the dessert stuff. It should even make a good pizza, though you may need to turn down the heat or the eggs will burn (but maybe not).

Thanks Jeff! I sort of just guestimated and added flour until it felt manageable (although still looser than some of the other recipes in HB5 like the Whole Wheat and Olive Oil). It came out pretty good. I have two other questions now:

1) I’ve made several of your recipes in HBi5 and I don’t seem to get any oven spring at all. In fact, when I was making bread the old-fashioned way, I didn’t get very much oven spring either. I’m wondering if it’s because I keep my flour in the fridge? I used to keep it out but stopped baking as much and didn’t want it to turn so started keeping it in the fridge. Would that effect anything? Any other suggestions?

2) I’m getting a slight bitter after-taste in the bread. Do you know what might be causing that?

I can’t imagine that refrigerating the flour’s affecting spring, but you can experiment with keeping it out. When you say “no oven spring,” esp since it’s with all homemade bread, I wonder about oven temp being inadequate, so check temp (at full preheat) with something like http://ow.ly/8CVPU . Is the bread dense? if not, it’s possible that your loaves are just spreading sideways rather than upward. If we think that’s it, we can suggest things…

Bitter taste may be either 1) whole grain, which is somewhat bitter, or 2) yeast– you can try our low-yeast version, see the FAQs tab above and click on that topic. If it’s whole wheat itself, you can try fresh-ground whole wheat, which some folks say is less better (though I like that flavor). See my post on this at:http://artisanbreadinfive.com/?p=1165